1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus.
2. Related Art
In recent years, the textile printing of clothes of cotton, silk, wool, chemical fiber, mixed fabric, etc. employs ink jet type printing apparatuses that print patterns and the like on a cloth by discharging inks to a surface of the cloth. A printing apparatus for use in textile printing includes a belt feeder unit that mounts the cloth on an endless belt that has stickiness and thus moves the cloth, in order to use as a recording medium a cloth that has elasticity. In such printing apparatuses, errors occur in the amount of movement of the endless belt due to the eccentricity of a belt driving roller that moves the endless belt and dimensional variations in the thickness direction of the endless belt. Therefore, for example, Japanese Patent No. 5332884 discloses an ink jet recording apparatus (printing apparatus) that performs test printing to determine a corrected amount of feed according to the fed position of a transport belt (endless belt) and corrects the amount of feed of the endless belt to the corrected amount of feed. Japanese Patent No. 5332884 states that this correction makes it possible to control changes in the amount of feed related to the thickness of a joint portion of the endless belt.
When a printing apparatus equipped with an endless belt continuously performs printing on a recording medium, transport error gradually occurs due to slip between the endless belt and the belt driving roller, abrasion of the endless belt, etc. The printing apparatus described in Japanese Patent No. 5332884, while correcting the amount of feed of the endless belt by performing test printing before starting actual printing, does not have a device or the like that detects the transport error that occurs in the continuous printing performed after the test printing.